Having Been (Mostly) Reassembled

Life update; a new direction for the Dispatches; a poll

I don’t know about y’all, but 2023 has brought a whirlwind of WTF to my life.

Even as dramatic production after dramatic production have been trotted out on the world stage—conflicts, wars and rumors of wars, tumultuous storms, shadowy agents bent on total destruction—my own personal life has mirrored this chaos in small but profound ways. It’s been a series of events largely outside of my realm of control, forcing me to either change or die. Can you relate?

It seems a lot of people can. Many of my friends and acquaintances have had similar experiences this year, or over the past few. I feel that there is a mighty, corrective energy coursing through the cosmos at this particular moment, affecting individuals and societies alike. It’s done asking us to please consider re-thinking our values and priorities and the ways we conduct ourselves in the world. It has moved on to the ass-kicking stage.

The ass-kicking stage demands of you that you see and take heed of all the products of your past choices, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Whatever is on your plate is there because you cooked it up and dished it out. Maybe other people helped you season it, or contributed ingredients to the meal, but that’s your cookery, foul as it might be. And you’re probably going to have to eat it. At least a few bites.

The ass-kicking stage tests you by placing new but eerily familiar choices in front of you, choices that seem uncannily similar to ones you’ve botched in the past. And it says, what will you do this time?

For me, the ass-kicking stage has taken the form of a divorce, plus months of excruciating processing of deeply buried trauma, a tearful farewell to a lifelong dream that was never meant to be. Each stage of the journey has been marked by signs and portents as my reality conspired to show me with utter clarity what I needed to let go of next. It could be a person, a relationship, an object, a place, an ingrained way of thinking, a lie I told myself. A favored outcome, the next best outcome, the last to worst outcome. A fear, an attachment of any kind, my hopes and dreams, my prides and prejudices.

Let go. Release, I was told again and again.

“But can’t I hang on to this one little thing?” I begged each time. “It doesn’t take up much space.”

NO.

And so, with great difficulty, I pried my atrophied fingers away from these little bundles and watched them spin out into the ethers. And I’m left now with only the burden of not quite knowing what to do with my unburdened self. But I’m figuring it out.

It’s all for the best, of course. Sometimes we can become so complacent in the familiarity of untenable situations, or in denial of responsibility for our own fate, or in attitudes of wishful thinking and other emotional escape routes, that something massive—and perhaps massively painful—must come along to disabuse us of our error. We must be disassembled in order to be reassembled in the proper configuration. We must allow ourselves to disintegrate into the deep dark soil of winter in order to activate the growth of spring.

It’s not all bad. This year has also brought new beginnings and rich opportunities for growth my way. I started attending school full-time, co-created a peaceful and cozy home where good things easily take root, discovered a thrilling and fulfilling balance between spontaneity and intentionality, found myself leading a meditation circle of Episcopalians (I know, I’m as surprised as you are), and generally got my house in order. Quite unexpectedly, I learned how to discern the voice of God among all the other competing voices clamoring for attention in my maturing psyche. The journey to all of this began before 2023, of course, but this year has been my proving ground. If 2019 Starr were to read this, she’d probably be like “Holy shitballs I have no idea what future me is talking about, but it sounds tantalizing and mysterious and amazing and difficult beyond belief. I have no idea how I’m supposed to get from here to there.” And that’s how I know I’ve grown.

And so, having been (mostly) reassembled, and with that activation of growth in mind, I’m excited (and a little nervous) to announce that Dispatches From Dystopia will be undergoing a slight course correction of its own, as both a reflection of the changes I’ve undergone this year and as a humble entrance point to what I see as the arduous, but necessary, but so, so gratifying path out of dystopia.

Here’s the deal. I’m not really interested any more in writing about the global cataclysms, although I fully expect the cataclysms to continue piling up, worsening, and impacting our lives. I no longer see the ongoing global crises as problems to be solved, but as solutions being born. They are forcing us at the community and society level into inescapable choice points, just like my reality has done for me over the past couple of years. Instead of covering and criticizing the cataclysms, I now want to focus on grounding and guiding and gathering the growth that must unerringly result.

The growth that we are asked to undergo is individual. It is personal. It is spiritual. It is evolutionary. And it is—dare I say it?—utopian.

My interests these days penetrate deep into the Mystery. Y’all know what I mean. It’s not just me, the whole world is feeling this shift. I’m scruting the inscrutable and starting, perhaps, to eff the ineffable (hat tip to Douglas Adams.) I’m not sure where all this is leading, but I know intuitively that it is the path I’m meant to tread. If that all sounds tantalizing and wonderful to you, I invite you to stick around and see what horizons await us.

Also, here’s a poll.